Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

He's right. If you find yourself wanting grid combat at the tabletop, play gloomhaven for a bit, then go back to your campaign!!

quote:

1. Story games suck, period. Along with those who play them.
2. Yes, you can play wrong, yes, it is ok to tell people their way of playing sucks, yes, this should be done frequently to weed out bad players from the hobby. Embracing a “Kumbaya – it’s ok for anyone to play anything, anyway attitude” is wrong and just ruins the hobby, filling it with poo poo players.
3. No, story games are not real RPGs; real RPGs don’t pander to special snowflakes who want to pretend they’re starring in a movie or novel.
4. Quoted for truth: “The adventure is the thing, not “a story.” If you want stories, go read a book, if you want derring-do, play a real RPG and then tell the story of the adventure you barely survived afterwards.” – Gygax
3. Real RPGers don’t and never would consider using “save points”. Concepts like that are for pansy-rear end little bitches; the hobby would be better off without them.
4. Matt is a pansy-rear end little bitch. Matt’s accomplishments are null and void since all of the previously mentioned references fall under story-games, please see numbers 1 through 4 concerning story-games.
5. If I ever have the pleasure of running across Matt or any other douche mod from RPGnet at a convention, I will gladly pimp slap him (or her, because equal rights for women and all that SJW jazz) for good measure and put them in their place.
6. Screw RPGnet, garbage in = garbage out

quote:

I agree with all your points. And Matt and any of the other rpg.net mods wouldn’t act tough in person because they are internet tough guys, big and tough behind the safety of their computers and nothings when they are in person and would risk getting punched in the face if they said something to someone in person.

Of course the rpg.net moderators aren’t the only one guilty of that. There is a blogger from a third world poo poo hole who if he ever surfaced would probably get stomped a new rear end in a top hat

quote:

Why doesn’t it surprise me that you agree with the guy who sounds like a massive rear end in a top hat?

quote:

cause he is right on all of his points? Maybe that is why?

quote:

drat it, I must be losing my touch. I only “sound like a massive rear end in a top hat”? Why, you are sorely mistaken, I assure you, I AM a massive rear end in a top hat. I don’t put up with bullies like those on RPGnet, I don’t abide elitist, story-game, narrative, whiny rear end gamers to trounce and deface the games I choose to enjoy, such as “traditional role-playing games”. So, yeah I’ll proudly wear that title, badge or any other descriptor if it means standing up for a hobby I not only enjoy, but don’t want to see become a pile of stinking dreck.

So, listen up JK Rowling, why don’t you and the rest of the Scooby Gang, pull your big girl pants, grab a pen and then narrate yourself climbing back into whatever den of wondrous bardic tale-weaving you crawled out of. I’m sure the rest of the amateur-hour authors are just itching to hear what marvelous, and obviously safe, role-playing “stories” you’re going to tell next.

Leave the role-playing “games” to the big boys who are willing to sling dice and let lady luck decide whether our characters live or die (not the GM and most definitely not the players) and where suggesting a do-over, redux, or “saved game reset” would get your rear end most assuredly ejected from the table or at the very least, taunted into submission and shame.

quote:

Quoted for Truth. I agree 100%

Libertad! posted:

[Dire MRA bullshit]

NGDBSS posted:

Where did you even find this? Most of the stuff posted in this thread I've seen, but this one is just so out there that I'm morbidly curious.

NGDBSS posted:

Where did you even find this? Most of the stuff posted in this thread I've seen, but this one is just so out there that I'm morbidly curious.

Libertad! posted:

Libertad! posted:

Cat Face Joe posted:

quote:

From The Designer's Notes in Quintessential Temptress

Writing this one has been a little bit on the tricky side. After all, what makes a Quintessential Temptress? Beautiful women have a certain special 'something' about them that makes men into fools, allows them to twist us around their little finger and do anything for them, but how do you define that something or even base a whole character class around it?

The answer is you do not. Instead the best approach was to treat the temptress as a sort of metaclass; as, on, reflection, the special 'something' is actually just a matter of having breasts and being passably attractive. Any female character can be a temptress then, all it is, is a matter of approach. What this book would do then would be to expand upon the options for this sort of play.

A large amount of this book turned out to be about prostitution, which is the most direct manipulation of men that there is, providing sex for money. The worry then is that 'will people be offended'? Well, people were offended by previous gems as 'The Wandering Poontng Chart' and people seriously thought that The Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers was about killing women. If life, the Internet and membership in roleplaying societies has taught me anything it is that some people will be offended by anything you say - so it is best not to be too worried about it.

Just to set the record straight: no, I do not think prostitution is harmless, funny, or a good way to make a living. It is degrading and awful and can be about exploitation in a way that erotic dancing or pornography is not (or is not always). I have known a few people who have had to do it to make ends meet and it is not good.

What we have here though is fantasy and, to make things abundantly clear to the odd brain-damaged person out there, fantasy is not reality. Fantasy fiction and roleplaying has long established archetypes, such as the manipulative she-bitch and the whore with a heart of gold, the hearty tavern wench and so on - and it is about these things that this book is about, not the reality.

Hopefully some of you will notice that, as with Nymphology, there are some serious, useable ideas and discussions within this book, particularly on brothels. I do not know if that speaks more about the sort of games that I play in, but brothels seem to feature heavily in a lot of our adventures and between our adventures, as internet cartoonist Scott Kurtz puts it... 'Ale and whores!'

As I was writing I found myself surprised by the amount of useful and useable game concept ideas that cropped up, more than I was even expecting. I think you can now viably have campaigns centred around travelling acting troupes, seraglios, noble courts and so on, using this book to help create a charged Dangerous Liaisons style game of sexual intrigue. Even just generating and running a brothel and dealing with its monthly problems could give you a game for a few months.

Lastly I would like to state a debt of thanks to the author of The Quintessential Rogue, which acted as a template, resource and model for much of this book. That book deals with much of the same shadowy underworld areas as this book does and, in trying to make the two books compatible, I appear to have ripped off much of that other book. Oops. Still, I recommend that you buy it as well, since it is drat good.

Cheers, enjoy your ale and whores. I know I do.

James 'Grim' Desborough

quote:

NB: Before engaging in pompous outrage and trolling,

quote:

In Defense of Rape

[picture of Zeus as a swan having sex with a woman omitted]

Well, there’s a title that has to be one of the most crass pieces of link bait I’ve ever written. Still I think that will actually help me make some of the point I’m going to try and make here.

The ‘sexism/misogny/rape culture/all men are bastards’ argument has been raging in ever increasing intensity over most of the things that I enjoy and like. Cinema, comics, fantasy art, role-playing games and computer games. I’m pretty much done taking the abuse and the offensive presumptions that go into these arguments without arguing back at this point, because I don’t want the argument to be entirely in the hands of censorious bullies.

This will mean I’ll get a lot of flak and misrepresentation (check, see comments and ‘rebuttals’) but what the gently caress, it goes with the territory and as well as being a writer and game designer I’m a skeptic and thus the sort of chap who demands claims be backed up with evidence. I’m not prepared to take spurious claims about ‘rape culture’ etc at face value without something substantive to back them up.

Leaving that aside for the moment, some of the accusations frequently levelled during these arguments are that using rape as a plot point is ‘lazy writing’ and that it somehow trivialises or normalises rape.

Is it lazy writing?

Well, honestly, at this point in human history every plot device and story has been used to death over and over again. There’s whole genres that centre around murder and that’s objectively worse than rape. Shakespeare said there were only seven kinds of story, Tolstoy said there were only two, I’m tempted to say there’s only one and that’s ‘poo poo happens’.

Rape is certainly some poo poo that can happen.

Writers reuse all sorts of plot elements and stories over and over again. A different amount of skill and different elements are mixed up but not every story has to be literary greatness, break new ground or be sensitive to each and every agenda out there.

As to rape?

Rape or attempted rape is a loving awesome plot element, one of many.

Rape can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death.

Rape can have interesting knock-on effects on a character’s relationships and their relationships with each other. If it does happen how does the character’s lover react? If their lover was the rapist, how do things change? Can you use this as a springboard to explore abusive relationships? Can love emerge from a violent encounter?

What if a pregnancy occurs from the rape? How hard is it for the character to endure that? What’s the effect on the father? The child? Nature or nature? Bad seed? Does the mother resent the child? Are they given up? Do they mistreat them through seeing the rapist whenever they look at them?

How does the event change the people involved? Is the rapist remorseful? Does the victim hate themselves or grow stronger? Does it change how they’re perceived? Can we use it as a springboard to examine the sexual culture in the story? Think about the differences in cultural reactions between, say, Arab/Muslim and Caucasian/Secular societies to rape even today. (Links added because someone played the racism card).

If we’re writing erotica? Well, depending which study you read somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of women have rape fantasies. I’ve no idea what the figure is for men and studies are probably wildly off due to the danger of saying so. Forced sex, rough sex, transgressive sex? These things are all wildly popular though – as fantasy. Much more popular than they are to perpetrate ‘for reals’.

There’s more, but I think that amply shows that it needn’t be lazy writing and as story material it goes right the way back to Greek myth. It’s a story-making tool that should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small.

So, part two.

Does the existence of rape stories, even as a cheap jab to get someone’s emotions involved, somehow trivialise or normalise rape?

I’m going to pin my colours to the mast pretty firmly on this one and say no it doesn’t.

How can I assert that with such confidence?

Simply this. If rape were trivialised it would not have the power to move us, involve us and activate our emotions.

If we had become inured to it, it would not work to establish a character’s evil credentials.

If it had become normalised it wouldn’t serve its purpose in a narrative. It wouldn’t be a big deal. It wouldn’t upset the characters because it wouldn’t upset us.

Ironically, the very fact that people get up in arms about a threat to Lara Croft in a video game, the rape of Daenerys’ by Khal Drogo in GRRM’s book and the resulting TV show or, fate help us, the existence of half-orcs in D&D, demonstrates that it is not trivial. It shows that it still has the power to shock and engage, to elicit the very reactions that make it attractive as a narrative element in the first place.

It also shows that no, it’s not acceptable or trivialised any more than mass murder – also common in books, RPGs, films and games is. Hopefully the people making spurious rape culture arguments will end up in the same mirth-laden cultural waste-basket as Jack Chick, Fredric Wertham and Jack Thompson.

quote:

NB: Before engaging in pompous outrage and trolling, first ask yourself if you are genuinely saying that rape can never, ever, ever be a useful, good or well treated story element. Because that is really all this article says. That it should not be removed from the writer’s toolbox.

Whether something is ‘well done’ or not is a subjective argument that can never be settled because tastes and sensitivities vary, but do you really mean that there should never, ever, ever be a story that includes rape, ever again? Can you honestly not tell the difference between fiction and reality? The difference between the advocacy of freedom of expression and advocacy of assault? Judging from the comments, many of you can’t. That’s far more worrying to me than the inclusion of rape in fiction.

If you agree that rape (and murder, and drugs, and torture and indeed anything else) can be used in stories, games and other materials successfully and should be judged on its merit, rather than its content, then you agree with me. The trick is to read further than the title.

quote:

Tired of people linking to this article (or more specifically this article’s title) without paying attention to the content. IDoR a link to the original. To remove any ambiguity whatsoever, the point of the article was simply this: No topic should be off limits. Nothing should be exempt from being story fodder. Whether rape, murder, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, racism or any other nasty thing anyone can think of. Artists must be free to explore without being censored, controlled or limited. The mere existence of something nasty in a story, game or piece of art is not sufficient reason for the art – or the artist – to be pilloried. Nor should we only allow people we consider (subjectively) skilled or politically acceptable to tackle difficult subjects. TL;DR – Censorship is bad, offence, upset or discomfort isn’t a good enough reason to prevent something being made. If you still object to that, stated as plainly and simply as that, we’re going to have a problem.

quote:

So what does RPGSite think of 13th Age?

------------

Gaze upon these playtest character sheets and cry! (Warning, they are pdfs)
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Jesus. I checked 2 of them out and i overdosed on special-snowflake-itis.
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Well, now that WotC has dumped "The D&D the Forge created", someone had to pick up the mantle. This thing sounds even more dissociated then 4e, but lets do it not only with the game mechanics, but lets do it with narrative metagame too. Jesus Wept.
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The escalation die sounds like:

Well combat is kind of slow and grindy as all hell so lets build in this fast forward button that helps ensure the players win, as is proper for this storywank system.
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Bleh, so everyone has a special destiny, divine edict or magical wossname in their backpack? No one's figured out yet how silly that's going to be in play?

"We must go to the Starsword Chapel Perilous to save my great-aunt Marmaduke, through which I trace my ancestry to the primal dragons of Hoot-nanny."

"No it's time for us to go to the Great Greasyboo so that I can merge with my fellow ancient time-timetraveling brethren to form the Twelve-Headed avatar Hastur-Amenbrotep."

"No, my special plot device, no my special plot device!"

You know what? Murder-hobos sound like a step up from that.
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"13th Age is less interested in giving you a version of a game you already own, tweaked slightly, and more interested in pushing the design space of D&D into new territory."

What a loving word salad. Just say the game is written for people who hate D&D.
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D&D plus some indie innovations is a no-brainer. Somebody was bound to do it, and they'll make some money at it.

The part I don't get is the "love letter to D&D" line. It seems more like a "love letter to epic heroic fantasy destiny stories". Maybe they mean "love letter to D&D the way we used to try to play it post-Dragonlance after the DM touched us, plus indie-story bits that make us feel pretty hip, plus a core of d20 on which we built our names". Yeah, I guess that's it. And really there's nothing wrong with that, I just don't see it as a love letter to D&D [as I define D&D, I guess].

Lest I come across as a hater, there are probably some cool ideas in 13th Age. "Everyone has a link to one of these major NPCs" could be an intriguing baseline for a particular campaign. For a whole game, I dunno.
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Dear Lovely TheRPGsite Members,

The 13th Age pre-order is out now.

I must say that it's been a close contest for amusement value between this forum and somethingawful, though therpgsite wins on invective, and somethingawful on useful feedback. Some of the comments on the initial rpgsite thread made Rob and I laugh out loud.

signed

Special Snowflake Simon

Simon Rogers
Pelgrane Press Ltd
ProFantasy Software Ltd
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Hey Simon,
When Rob leaves and you're done laughing, you might want to remember that one thing us knuckle-dragging world-immersion types like to do way more then the storywankers - we love to make MAPS. Not just battlemats, but campaign maps of entire worlds.
-


...And so on.

quote:

hread necromancy: A post in one of my threads brought me here, and I have to say it's a great thread. So I'll throw my hat into the ring.

Humans (whites): As per PHB: one bonus feat and bonus skill points.

Gnomes (Semites)

-2 Strength, +2 Wisdom (wily in nature).
+2 bonus to appraise, bluff, and diplomacy skill checks.
Greedy nature: Whenever faced with something they desire, a gnome must make a will save (DC 10 to 20 as determined by DM) or attempt to acquire what's desired through guile.


Elves (East Asians)

+2 Dexterity, -2 Strength
+2 bonus to will saves
+2 bonus to initiative


1/2 Orcs (mixed negro):

+2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom
35' base movement rate
Ability to rage 1/day
-2 penalty to all knowledge and craft skills.
+5 bonus to intimidate skill checks.


Orcs (full negro):

+2 Constitution, -4 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom
35' base movement rate
Ability to rage 1/day
-2 penalty to all knowledge and craft skills.
Primitive Instincts: +2 bonus to all saving throws.


Goblins and 1/2 Goblins (Natives and Mestizos)

Needs work, can't think of one single advantage. What are they good at?

__________________
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”
George Washington

Stormfront Genealogical Society

Racial differences in average IQ.

US racial demographics 1790-2050

Handy graphing site

quote:

From reading and posting on the Opposing Views section of the forum, I read a lot of foolish comments from the anti's. Statements like "I know a black person who is really smart, therefore everything you say about racial intelligence differences is wrong." Well, of course, the lack of understanding of statistics this statement shows is staggering. I try to recall when in my life when I could have fallen for such a foolish statement and I can't think of when I would have.

I completely understood how there could be smart blacks and yet blacks be less intelligent than whites as a whole when I was a child. When was the first time I thought about an idea like that? When I got into Dungeons and Dragons at the age of nine or ten. I knew that elves were more agile than humans. I knew that because they had a +1 bonus (back when I started playing, now its +2) to Dexterity, I knew they were more dexterous even though the average elf had a Dexterity of 11.5 and humans could have a Dexterity of 18.

These days, orcs have an average Intelligence of 8.5 (10.5 average for 3d6, -2) and since IQ roughly corresponds to D&D Intelligence times ten, then that puts your typical orc at an average IQ of about 85 . . . who does that remind you of? Of course, even as a child (long before I was racially aware) I would have known you were a fool if you said that orcs were as smart as humans just because you had an orc character with an Intelligence of 16. So when I was ten, I apparently knew more about statistics than your typical anti does.

And this point may seem a bit silly, but it introduces an important idea that most white people are conditioned not to believe in - racial essentialism. The idea that race determines certain characteristics or tendencies. We knew that elves we dexterous, that dwarves were tough, that orcs were mean and nasty. We also knew that there were exceptions and that exceptions didn't mean that general trends didn't still apply.

D&D also has a lot about racial loyalty. Elves band together in protection of their forests. Orcs raid human villages and have to be stopped by the hero. In D&D, you have loyalty to your people and you know that sometimes a race in general can be a threat to your's.

As I've grown older over the years I've continued to enjoy role playing games and my though the games I've played have advanced beyond just fighting orcs and finding magic items - but I think that some of those ideas I was exposed to as a child were good lessons that maybe helped me come to terms with ideas that are part of beings a White Nationalist.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Wow this thread is a hundred laughs a minute, are there any more fish in this barrel?

quote:

Joe - you get, though, that a game like that doesn't emulate the kind of heroic fantasy fiction that a lot of us enjoy, right? I mean, ESkemp has been bringing up Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Orlando Furioso a lot lately; add in related-ish works like Outlaws of the Water Margin and Spenser's Faerie Queen and a hefty helping of classical myth and you start to get where someone like me is coming from. Now add in stuff like the Dynasty Warriors interpretation of RoT3K for an extra layer of over-the-top awesomeness for spice. Surely you can see that what you're describing won't scratch that itch?

Topher

quote:

Could you give me an example of a 3e or 4e Fighter or Rogue ability that a normal human being couldn't achieve with sufficient training?

ProfessorCirno posted:

That may be it. I've never read, nor even heard of any of those books. But I do get where you're coming from in that you want to replay in DnD stuff in the style of your favorite books. I'm just not up on the latest books.

Maybe I'm just too loving old and set in my ways to get it or something.

LatwPIAT posted:

There is no joy in reading racist ramblings. Only misery. Please, fun grog. People actually being grognardy. People declaring non-storygamers the John Galts of RPGs. People laughably blind to their own faults. People hoist by their own petards.

quote:

Let's talk money. Apparently, in some circles there is the following saying: "There are two fundamental causes of madness amongst students: sexual frustration and the study of coinage." (A nice set of lecture notes on the subject is here.) A few points:

One major unfixable mistake is in using the gold standard for the D&D economy. It's bad history and it's bad game design. Historically, medieval money supplies were almost uniformly in silver coins, and the value was fundamentally based in how much raw silver metal was at hand. But more importantly for our purposes, in D&D PCs start out with the most valuable coinage, and will only experience currency going down from there. Clearly, it would be better to start with the cheapest metal, and then advance through more exotic categories. (In accordance with the central design conceit of D&D itself.) Even if some portion of us run games with a silver standard (for example, see Dragon #74, June 1983), the gold-piece premise has been reiterated in so many hundreds of RPG's and computer games that it's inseparable from fantasy in general in the public's mind.


Leaving that aside, let's consider the value of our ideal coins. The historical issue is enormously complex (see proverb above) because every principality used different mints, sizes, metal purities, units of weight, etc. But there are two principal issues that we're warned to keep in mind. One is the difference in units between actual coins versus moneys-of-account (i.e., units used in paper accounting only). For example, in the famous Carolingian money system (1 pound/louvre = 20 shillings/sou = 240 pence/deniers) only pennies/deniers were actually minted -- no shillings/sous or pound coins were created, and those units were used for record-keeping and ledgers only.

The second principal cautionary issue is that of debasement: Over the years, the princes and their mints would continually reduce the amount of silver content in their coins (by either mixing in more copper, etc., or reducing the overall coin size). For us, this makes it hard to compare the value of actual coins over the whole medieval period, because the values were constantly in a downward slide, in some cases causing inflation and the need to establish new, larger coins or non-debased currency. (In fact, this was one of the reasons to use "moneys-of-account" -- sometimes measuring raw silver bullion weight -- to keep a fair evaluation of one's worth, even when the coins were getting less valuable over the years.) One notable exception: England (see linked article), which kept the pound sterling mostly fixed over the years -- and therefore we might use that as the most dependable example of medieval coinage.

So, consider this particular historical example. View a list of English coinage in the 13th-15th centuries here. As our chief examples we'll take the "groat" (silver coin, worth 4 pence, i.e., 1/3 shilling) and "noble" (gold coin, worth 20 groats, i.e., 1/3 pound). There are smaller coins than these (half-nobles, quarter-nobles, etc.), but none significantly larger. So the noble:groat:penny coin ratio is 1:20:80.

I think this would be excellent from a game-design perspective, assuming that we used the silver standard as a basis. Two notable advantages: (1) The copper/silver pennies, at a 1:4 ratio, are not so cheap as to be entirely worthless and left in the dungeon by our adventurers. (2) The gold nobles, at a 1:20 ratio provide a nice geometric increase in the value that can be carried at higher levels, without having to resort to omnipresent bags of holding. Once again, the historical solution could serve as our game-design solution: copper coins for peasants, silver coins for the daily trade of freemen, and gold coins for transactions between kings.

Note also how close this historical coinage is to the OD&D system in Vol-2, p. 39, which stipulates a gold:silver:copper piece ratio of 1:10:50. It's basically a quasi-decimalization of the 1:20:80 ratio that we're finding in our research. In addition, it fairly represents the medieval valuation of gold bullion (about 1:10 to 1:14 of silver), assuming that all of our coins are the same size. The OD&D numbers are both reasonably good history and game design.

So, coming back to our game's history, why change those numbers in the AD&D Player's Handbook? In that work, Gygax establishes a 1:20:240 valuation for our game coins, while maintaining a gold standard. That turns all of our advantages into disadvantages: (1) Players start at the top value with nowhere to work up, (2) PCs are unable to carry much value in coinage at higher levels, (3) Copper pieces are effectively worthless. While using the classic Carolingian value ratios for the pound:shilling:pence, it overlooks the historical fact that those were not coins, but rather moneys-of-account only. A highly questionable change to the game, when the Original D&D system was so eminently reasonable in both historical and game-design terms.

So at this point, I'm personally a bit torn. If we were to establish a reduced-value system of coinage with a silver standard, which is preferable? The 1:20:80 ratio we see in historical England, or the 1:10:50 ratio we see in OD&D Vol-2? Poll completed; follow-up over here.

quote:

A while back I initiated a discussion on money in D&D, and created a poll with a couple options for a preferred money system. You can see the results at the top here, which I'll be using in my own games starting today.

One of the things that was pointed out last time was that the by-the-book OD&D money structure of 1:10:50 (gold:silver:copper) was passingly similar to the real-world coin values in medieval England of about 1:20:80. Note again that this is separate from the often-confused issue of "moneys of account", i.e., pounds/shillings/pence at 1:20:240, which were used for bookkeeping purposes only, and not actually coins. We consider it a mistake to use those ratios in AD&D for several reasons. (And thanks to commenter Tsojcanth for pointing out that GURPS also uses the historical 1:20:80 coin conversion rate.) Our OD&D coins more-or-less match the English silver "Groat" (4 pence, 1/3 of a shilling) and gold "Half Noble" (40 pence, 1/6 of a pound value).

So here's what I'll be doing from now on:

Convert the economy to a "silver standard". Read the OD&D Basic Equipment list as being priced in silver pieces, not gold (and start PCs with the same). Likewise, read the values for gems, jewelry, hiring henchmen, paying specialists, tolls and tithes, crafting magic items, etc., as being in silver pieces. Award experience at the rate of 1 XP = 1 sp.
Reduce coin treasures appropriately. Fortunately, by choosing the OD&D conversion rate of 1 gp = 10 sp, it's simple to convert monetary treasures to an equivalent purchasing amount; just divide by 10. For example, monster treasure-types (Vol-2, p. 22) are now generated in 100's of coins, not 1000's. Do the same thing for other coin-specific tables, treasure troves in pre-published adventures, etc.
Change the encumbrance rate of coins. Let's assume that our money weighs an average of 100 grains per coin. This is realistically large: 6.48 grams per coin, 70 coins per pound, and 980 coins per stone weight. For simplicity, we'll say: 1,000 coins per stone in our streamlined encumbrance system. That makes it exceedingly easy to adjudicate. (Another benefit to the 1:10 gp:sp choice is that it accurately reflects the medieval value of gold & silver by weight, i.e., it's correct to think that our coins do in fact weigh the same amount.)
Use historical pricing data to fill in gaps. Now that we have a more real-world based economy structure, it's reasonable to use historical resources like the Medieval Sourcebook to answer more esoteric questions when they come up in play. You'll just have to convert moneys-of-account to coinage: Where it says pence (d) use the same number of copper coins; where it says shillings (s), multiply by 3 for our silver coins; and where it says pounds (L), multiply by 6 for our gold coins.

Examples of treasure generation: We'll use the (unguarded) treasure table on Vol-3 p. 7. On the 1st level, I roll up: 30 sp and 3 gp (a little under average). That may look very small to our jaded eyes, but notice that it's enough to buy a full suit of plate mail and a sword. If you want somewhat more exciting treasure, advance the game to 4th level: Here I get 500 sp and a +1 sword. Later at the 10th level: A treasure with 3,000 sp, 1,000 gp, and 7 gems worth base 50 sp each. Note that this entire treasure can be carried away by one character in a big, normal sack (4 stone weight), earning 13,350 XP (over 1/10th of a Lord's level), and enabling him or her to purchase a small galley. Now that's treasure worth fighting for!

Some of the lessons here, I think, are these: You don't want to "blow your wad" with enormous summer-action-movie-size treasures right at 1st level. A fat purse with a few dozen coins should be worth a thief's time to knife someone over. A wizard should be able to carry enough money in the folds of his robe to buy a night's stay at an inn, hire a lantern-bearer, or procure some interesting ephemera. If you want to jump into "heroic" adventure from the get-go, then it should match the rest of the D&D mechanics in that 3rd or 4th level is where you would start.

Pricing power, and therefore game-balance, is always exactly the same as in the regular game; a roll of N on whatever treasure table allows you to buy exactly the same number of helmets or horses (or whatever), and awards exactly the same XP, as in the base game. The one thing that's changed is carrying capacity -- characters can pack out almost ×100 greater value in treasure (×10 for the silver-standard switch, and ×7 for the weight-of-coins change). No longer do you have characters leaving the majority of a treasure in the dungeon at 1st level, and worsening geometrically from there.

Examples of historical conversions: Look to the Medieval Sourcebook. Leather armor in 1285 is listed as 5s (shillings): convert to coins by 5×3 = 15 silver pieces (historical groats), and notice that's identical to the OD&D equipment list. Helmets (Burgonet, 1590) were 4s: convert 4×3 = 12 silver pieces; compare to OD&D listing of 10. Draft horses (13th cen) are documented at 10s-20s: convert starting price 10×3 = 30 silver pieces; again, identical to the OD&D listing.

Lessons from this exercise: The OD&D price listings are actually somewhat realistic (at least on the right order-of-magnitude; usually within a factor of ×2 or ×3 or so) if you read them in units of silver pieces, like the historical "groat" coins. (But not gold pieces; nor shillings or any other non-coin money-of-account.) I think that's good news, because it allows us to leverage our wealth of resources from history to support and enrich our game in this particular context.

Now I'll point out a pair of outliers. One exception to realistic OD&D pricing in silver coins is the heavy armor types, chain and plate mail. While Vol-1 lists these at prices of 30 and 50 respectively, looking at the Medieval Sourcebook shows that they could realistically be valued at 10 times those figures in silver pieces. You could change them, but I'm conservative enough that I don't want to re-do the pricing list just for this. I'll be giving my players the price list unchanged from the OD&D books, merely referencing them in terms of silver instead of gold pieces, and running the game unchanged in that regard.

The other exception is the cost of men-at-arms. One thing that's apparent in OD&D as you look on facing pages in the DM's book (Vol-3, p. 22-23) is that the prices for Specialists & Men-at-Arms are in totally different magnitudes (the former in hundreds or thousands per month; the latter in ones or maybe tens per month). The costs for Specialists can be interpreted as silver/month and be compatible with the rest of our system, as usual (compare to Sourcebook: "armorers"). However, if we take the Sourcebook mercenary/army wages (usually in a few pence or shillings per day), add in a like factor for upkeep/support, multiply out to monthly payments, and then convert to our half-noble gold coins, then we get numbers very similar to the OD&D table. So this is the one case in our entire system where we should do the following for realism's sake: Read the OD&D Men-at-Arms monthly costs in actual gold pieces, not silver pieces (i.e., multiply by 10 for silver pieces).

One other note: If you'd prefer to use the 1:20:80 ratio in your own game, almost all of the foregoing would still apply, although you'd have to divide coin treasures by 20 (instead of 10). When converting historical prices you'd multiply both shillings & pounds by 3 to get your silver and gold coinage. And OD&D men-at-arms prices could possibly be cut in half (reading in gold pieces).

In summary, this fairly lightweight revision provides a lot of advantages: (1) We maintain by-the-book coin conversions for OD&D. (2) We can still use almost all of the OD&D tables and figures as written, simply dividing coin treasure amounts by 10 on the fly. (3) Game balance is maintained with identical overall purchasing power and XP awards. (4) We create a campaign where PCs can carry appreciably large amounts of value with them, whether in the dungeon, wilderness, or city (even when treasures are increasing hugely at the upper levels). And (5) We develop an economy and coinage reasonably in tune with medieval Europe, such that we can use historical sources to enrich and reinforce our game when desired.

Nuns with Guns posted:

Honestly, I admire the amount of thought this guy put into penny-counting bookkeeping that ultimately didn't seem to alter anything of value to the game, but if it helps his engagement then good on him.

quote:

So I've stated that 5e is Vaporware. I'm pretty sure of it. The more of the release teasers I see, the more convinced I am. But I get questions like this:

BearsAreBrown posted:

Maybe I'm less experienced or maybe I'm less jaded, but Frank, why are you so sure about all this? You seem to be extrapolating heavily from a few paragraphs of text. Are the drawing from some source material I'm unaware of?

And yeah, that's reasonable. Why should you be convinced that 5e D&D is a Vaporware Product? It goes to who is making it, what they've said about what they are making, what they've made recently and in the past, and so on.

First, let's look at the track record of Mike Mearls. Remember when he fixed Skill Challenges? Sorry, remember the first seven times that he announced that he was fixing skill challenges? Remember Iron Heroes? The man has a history, going back several years and literally dozens of instances, of announcing with great fanfare that he was going to make a new subsystem, then announcing the subsystem was ready for publication, then announcing that criticism of that subsystem was unfair because it "wasn't really finished" and he was "working on something new and exciting".

Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twenty eight times, what the loving gently caress?

Now 5th edition is supposed to be layer upon layer of Mike Mearls blessed subsystem. Each one done up to the specifications of a different section of the fanbase. Each one interacting in some odd way with all the others, but every one of them optional. So, for example: if you make a cogent condemnation of the way they track movement or durations or whatever, they can claim openly that this version is "not for you" and is nebulously for some other group and obviously you should be using some other movement or duration tracking subsystem instead.

They have announced a platform that is perfectly suited for denial in depth of non-functionality. In order to show that there is a problem to the satisfaction of their ability to not simply dismiss it for you supposedly not being the target audience, you'd have to do each separate variant together. And then they could dismiss your complaint for being TL;DR.

In short: they've made an edition that would take months or years to expose as vaporware and the project leader is a man who has made nothing but vaporware since Kerry was running for president. And his second in command is a man who hired out his name to promote that guy's actual Vaporware in 2005. Remember: it was originally called "Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes" when it was originally released and sold for real money despite the fact that none of the subsystems worked properly and even Mike Mearls admitted that the magic system was just a draft taken from a brainstorming session. The number three guy is Bruce Cordell, who apparently didn't read any of the rules or setting material for 4th edition before writing rules and setting material for 4th edition. In short: a man whose design work has been literally monkeys on typewriters style vaporware paycheck writing for at least four years.

So the entire core group of authors have a clearly demonstrated history of making vaporware, and the hype is completely consistent with and even suggests a vaporware product. But how do we know that this is actually vaporware? Well, there are clues.

Let's talk about they admit they haven't done: higher levels and hard numbers. That's... the entire design. It's a level based system, therefore if you haven't tested the leveling or the system, you haven't actually done anything. They are already putting up sign-ups for beta testers, but their actual product has been admitted to being in a pre-alpha state.

Now let's talk about the things they've promised. They have promised that a character who gets pure numbers will be balanced with a character who gets abilities instead. We already know that's impossible, because we've played BESM and Champions. So we know we're being promised things that we know can't be implemented. Either they know that they can't really deliver and are jerking our chain because it's Vaporware, or they haven't actually gotten far enough down the design rabbit hole to recognize that fact, because it is loving Vaporware.

Now let's talk about the things they've actually shown people: Magical Teaparty. MTP, all the way down. The actions people took at the D&DXP were not on the character sheets, the DMs did not have DC charts. The DMs used their judgment to determine whether actions succeeded or failed. The actual game system, if there was one, was not used.


Now let's get into the "how did we get to this point?" part. In short: job security. WotC has held Christmas Layoffs every year (except last year, when the layoffs were in early Summer) for as long as they have been owned by Hasbro. The head of 4th edition D&D has been fired every year since 4th edition D&D was created. It's entirely possible that the people left at WotC believe that the only way they can keep their jobs is by releasing a faulty product that needs to be patched so that they will be retained. It's possible that they believe that their jobs are completely unrelated to their performance and that they will probably have to go look for work in the near future and are simply phoning it in.

Regardless of the motivations on the ground, it is clear that having an office filled entirely with new blood means that there is no process. There are no working relationships or project schedules, because heads roll too often for a corporate culture to actually show up. A half-assed, overly ambitious project is probably inevitable with a core set of demoralized hacks who are already looking for a new job leading a group of untested fanboys who don't know what they are doing.

But the promises being made for 5e are on the face of it absurd, the people in charge have a long and storied history of booting projects out the door in a totally nonfunctional state, they lack enough confidence in their mechanics to actually use them, and they've admitted that they haven't even tried to do so in-house. This is what Vaporware looks like.

-Frank

quote:

Something called D&D 5 was eventually released, but it was a vastly scaled down product that hit none of the promotional points. The entire D&D Next Modular Gaming Experience never materialized and 5th edition hasn't produced so much as a Fighter's book in 3 loving years. What did go to print is laughably incomplete.

Yes, D&D Next was vaporware. The promised edition never happened. The minimalist thing they shat out after most of the high profile designers jumped ship to go make solo projects does not meet any of the design ambitions set for it and did not receive any meaningful support.

People can claim that "something eventually came out" and that games like Duke Nukem Forever and The Last Guardian aren't Vaporware, but that is semantic bullshit. If the company cuts and runs, dropping "whatever they happen to have" and the product meets none of the design criteria, that's still Vaporware.

-Frank

quote:

/tg/, we really, REALLY need to talk about the recent surge in popularity of "Dungeon World" and its sister systems around here, especially the trend of recommending it as a good system for "introducing" players to our hobby.

I understand that there is an obsession with being subversive and finding the most super specialest alternative to D&D possible, but having finally taken the time to read into Dungeon World and the reasons why this game has caught on around here and other forums I feel the need to be frank: this NEEDS to stop. I try as hard as I can not to be a "badwrongfun" style curmudgeon, but this is not a role playing game. Full stop. This is not a role playing game, and this disingenuous promotion of it as such is legitimately dangerous to this hobby. This is an exercise in self-congratulatory free form group storytelling.

This is a "game" where the danger of literally any challenge is by design arbitrary, not just from encounter to encounter, but from action to action. There's no actual combat or tactics at play, everyone takes turns basically describing a "cool fantasy battle" and resolve everything through "dodge danger" and "hack and slash" rolls triggered at the GM's whim. This is a game proud of being anti-structure, where the goal is to explain to the GM how many cool things your players do instead of actively overcoming any challenges in your way.

It's chaos. Consequences of certain failures are decided collaboratively. The GM is encouraged to be more of an antagonistic player than an actual referee of any rules. At /tg/'s suggestion I watched a few videos of people playing this. At one point the *GM* asked the *PLAYERS* what rumors they had heard in town.

I get that the people involved in this game by admission shill it everywhere, but please stop pushing this as a system for beginners. It's dangerous to our hobby and the behaviors it promotes encourages entitled players with disruptive expectations for how parties are meant to work.

Stop.